By preparing one dodgy pitch after another, India are only undermining their own batsmen’s confidence, and making their skilled fast bowlers redundant. That defies belief when the team has excelled in all conditions.
Make no mistake, this was a hammering. Even the strongest Test sides lose occasionally on home soil, but such has been India’s dominance in their conditions over the past decade and more that any such result leads to banner headlines and intense soul-searching. Perspective is necessary too, since India still lead the series 2-1. But what needs to be stressed here is just how unnecessary this defeat was.
Since cricket resumed after the Covid-19 pandemic in February 2021, this was the 11th Test to be played on Indian soil. This was the eighth of those to finish inside three days. And if we factor in 90 overs a day, this was the sixth straight match in India that didn’t even go into day four. To put that into perspective, in the previous decade, between March 2010 and March 2020, only 11 of 48 Tests in India finished inside three days. Of those, one was against debutants from Afghanistan, and five against West Indies – poor travellers for over two decades now – and Bangladesh, who have hardly played in India.
India won a whopping 36 of those matches, losing only three. In fact, after back-to-back losses to Alastair Cook’s England in Mumbai and Kolkata in 2012, India lost just one more match in the rest of the decade, against Australia in Pune (2017). The inference is clear. Whatever the conditions, India could get the job done. When England were beaten in Mumbai and Chennai in 2016, the visitors made 400 and 477 in their first innings.
The batsmen made big runs, the spinners usually spun a web as the matches wore on, and they were pace bowlers skilled enough to use the reverse swing that became a factor once the ball got scuffed up on abrasive surfaces. It was an Indian team that had every base covered, which didn’t need undue assistance from the surfaces.
In the 48 Tests between 2010 and 2020, India scored at an average of 44.32 per wicket, and at 3.51 runs an over. The numbers in the last three years present a very different picture, with just 30.69 runs per wicket. India have scored more than 400 just once, and been bowled out for less than 300 seven times.
Almost all of these pitches have been underprepared. It’s important to make a distinction here, between a spin-friendly surface and a poor pitch. No cricket aficionado has a problem with a spin-friendly surface, which often provides the ultimate test of a batsman’s skill. If you go back to the epic India-Australia series in 2001, each of the three pitches was spin-friendly, but the ball wasn’t shooting through at ankle height in the first session.
The key word here is ‘bounce’. Regardless of whether a pitch aids spin or seam, it should have even bounce. When full-length balls take off and hit the wicketkeeper on the helmet, and those pitched on a good length scuttle through to hit the stumps a third of the way up, it reduces batting to a lottery rather than a test of skill.
India are such a good side that they don’t need such ‘favours’ either. What these pitches have done is systematically undermined the batsmen’s confidence, and rendered the pace bowlers almost redundant. If India’s batting group has put up such dismal numbers since 2020, it isn’t because they have collectively lost ability. It’s because they’re playing on surfaces where they can’t confidently trust their skills.
When India hammered Australia 4-0 in 2013, R Ashwin did the bulk of the bowling, with 241.2 overs. But there were also big shifts from the pace bowlers, who chipped in with 161 overs across the four Tests. Four years later, when India came from behind to win 2-1, the quicks tallied 226.3 overs, marginally more than Ashwin’s 225.2. And while the spinners were once again at the forefront, it was the pacers’ ability to dry up the runs that played a huge part in the series-levelling win in Bangalore.
In three Tests so far in this series, Ravindra Jadeja has bowled the most overs – 106.1. The pace bowlers have been asked to bowl just 61.1. In three Tests. And remember too that these aren’t the kind of trundlers India once had to throw the new ball to in the pre-Kapil Dev years. Mohammed Shami, Umesh Yadav and Mohammed Siraj are all thoroughbred quicks, each capable on changing a game with an incisive spell. Umesh, who has more than 100 wickets on Indian turf, and Shami, with 74 wickets from just 20 home Tests, have done that on multiple occasions.
The preparation of pitches to overwhelmingly favour one type of player is a valid tactic when a team has glaring weaknesses. In the days when India didn’t have quality fast bowlers, or when the batsmen weren’t especially adept at handling pace, it made sense. Now, with a team that has won two series in Australia and notched up notable wins in England and South Africa, it defies belief.
On a typical Indian pitch, of the kind that were mostly prepared between 2010 and 2020, India will beat Australia nine times out of 10. But if the powers that be insist on surfaces that look like moon craters on the first day itself, all it takes is one poor batting session to be out of the match. Yes, India played some dreadful shots on the opening morning, but there were also dismissals that had little to do with the bowlers and everything to do with the surface.
Like the loss to England at Chennai in 2021, this one should hurt Indian cricket. The answer, however, isn’t the kind of pitch that was subsequently prepared at Ahmedabad later in that series, with the match ending inside two days. There’s a World Test Championship final to play at The Oval in June. For the sake of both India’s batsmen and fast bowlers, the final Test of this series should be played on a surface that doesn’t make a mockery of their ability.